Cooked Pasta: How to Account for Water Absorption

Learn how to account for the water (and potentially salt) absorbed and subsequent nutritional changes when cooking pasta.

When cooking dry pasta in boiling water, water is absorbed in the process. To account for water absorption (and salt absorption, if salt has been added to the cooking water), we recommend creating a sub-recipe for each type of cooked pasta variety used in your operation. 

Option 1 (recommended):

Create a new recipe called 'Cooked Rigate Pasta'. In the components section of the recipe, add 1 cup of dry, uncooked rigate pasta, 1 cup of water, and .125 tablespoons of salt. Set the recipe yield to 2 cups, under the assumption that pasta typically doubles in volume when cooked. 

Next, create a new conversion for how much 1 cup of cooked pasta weighs (in either grams or ounces) by clicking on the '+' symbol under custom units & conversions section. In this example, add 1 cup = 107g (see table below for common cooked pasta volume to weight conversions). 

Cooked Pasta Conversions (USDA reference)

Create additional sub-recipes for each type of pasta used in your operations, if desired.

Option 2:

If you would like to perform the calculations manually to determine how much water was absorbed during the cooking process, measure the weight of the uncooked pasta and then weigh it again after it is cooked and drained. 

Weight of the cooked pasta - weight of uncooked pasta = amount of water absorbed during the cooking process

Like above, create a sub-recipe for the cooked pasta and add in the amount of water absorbed determined by the equation above as a component to the recipe. Then add the amount of uncooked pasta. Lastly, add the weight-to-volume conversion for the cooked pasta based on your measurements. Example: 1 cup cooked penne = 107g. Set the recipe yield according to your measurements.